a hybrid soul,
one to blend like watercolour
paintworks into the social canvas,
boys would stare,
at the star, gone dying, who knew
spotlights illuminate
the pretty parts,
the hips and the mannequin calves.
until the sun dimmers, like gods
dipped lantern burnt out,
and bodies are stripped like birds
of their feathers, plucked to glaring
scars and worn out faces peer
into the mirror - who is the ugliest
of them all.

they called her by names,
prettier than her own,
until she trembled into the
valley of the dolls, a dark and dismal
place with discarded arms and legs,
to build the perfect 'woman' -
a vulnerable creature, made to
be loved, to be wanted.

what city this is, it's clear to me,
where silver steel is all i see,
winding, turning, to the left and right,
where no man is content to simply be.

it glitters and gleams even in the darkest night,
flickers with flashes of flint-edged light,
o, the people, with their long-dead eyes,
they know not the secrets this city hides.

o, the people, and their anguished cries,
i hear them all, the lies, the sighs,
alas! these very things i dread,
the city moves on, the clock ticks by.

a penny for drink, sir! a penny for bread,
a pound so i might find a city-bed,
no place to lay my city-head,
no place to lay my city-head.

this is how you leave- as if it isn't a last goodbye. as if tomorrow, the sun will rise once more and nothing will have changed. do not say 'forever'. believe with all your heart that you will return to all you have ever known, that the path you are walking has not diverged. lies are easy to tell.

this is how you leave- quietly, with all the tacit promises that silence avows. with your step as soft as rainfall. let your prayers be unspoken and may they never cross your lips. never make a wish you know to be futile. lies are hard to hear.

this is how you leave- with tears in your eyes and a scream lodged in the valley of your lungs. hold the city to your ears and your hands to your heart and let the sobs overwhelm you till you can no longer draw breath. then (and only then) bury the shards of your heart in the graveyard of forever, and move on.

this is how you leave- with pomp. with fanfare. with the knowledge that you have been the best you could be and done all you could do. remember to celebrate. there is so much more to life than the cotton-soft memories we fall back on when the landscape is bleak. the thorns are as important as the roses.

this is how you leave- as if you were never there at all. as if the years have been nothing more than a dream that leaves you where you wake. deny. forget. put a band-aid over the scar that gapes across the expanse of your chest, and sleep easy.

this is how you leave- you never really do. goodbyes are hard to say. but trust in your hellos. to every end there is a beginning, always and forever.

this is how you leave-

you don't.

if everything else you abandon in the recesses of the life you left behind, remember this:

(when you are holding back the explosion of a scream in the middle of the corridors, when you have a fist in your mouth and sobs rising in your throat while sitting in a lonely corner, when everything seems hopeless and the only way out of despair and anguish is the bottle of pills on your desk or the ladder up to the roof)

- you will always have something to return to. beyond the brick and mortar, beyond the concrete and tile, beyond the only home you have ever called your own or known as yours.

because home is people.

it always has been.